"Eden": A Femme Fatale in the Homosocial Garden

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

Eden (2019) is a short horror film, indeed, lasting approximately six-and-a-half minutes. Three somewhat immature “homies” encounter a femme fatale who looks somewhat like a modern-day vampire. She is extraordinarily strong and quick, and she can open her mouth tremendously wide. Like any other self-respecting femme fatale, she lures male victims with her beauty.

The plot is simple and straightforward:

D. J., Elliott, and Jason, who appear to be slightly drunk, clown with each other as they make their way through dark city streets to Elliot's car. On the way, D. J. (Benjamin Abiola) drops his keys.

In the back seat, D. J. realizes that he doesn't have his keys.

Retracing his steps, he finds them on the sidewalk and pockets them.

In the car, Jason (Bobby Coston) shows Elliott (Charles Brakes III) a photograph on his smartphone: a young woman whose buttocks they admire. Jason tells Elliott that the woman has a sister.

Seeing a young woman (Tayla Drake) at a distance, he offers her a ride. He runs to her, and she slits his throat with a sweep of her nails.

Clutching his throat, he staggers away from her and falls to his knees.

 

In the car, Elliott tells Jason that he's going to “check on D. J.”

On the sidewalk, Elliott sees a trail of blood. He turns and runs back to his car, calling to Jason.

Returning his call, Jason gets out of the car, leaving the door open. He looks frightened as he repeatedly calls Elliott's name.

The car door slams shut behind him. He whirls and takes a couple steps backward.

Turning, he sees the young woman who killed J. D. Her top is covered in J. D.'s blood.

She looks up, smiling. Her mouth, dripping blood, opens impossibly wide.

Elliott's fate remains unknown.

Of course, besides Elliott's fate, the film leaves many other questions unanswered. Who is the predatory woman? What, exactly, is she? Why does she stalk men? Why does she kill them? Why does she feed upon human blood?

There is plenty of room for both plot and character development, but this exercise in filmmaking, in itself, doesn't offer much depth.

The only attempt to involve the action in a theme that transcends the story's action per se is a quotation, apparently invented, which is attributed to an apparently fictitious pontiff, Pope Seymore IV: “Lust of the beauteous garden bait souls of the damned, and only then will they feel the wrath of Eden.”

To begin with, the meaning of the quotation is unclear. “Lust of” suggests that it is the “garden” that lusts and that, perhaps (the rest of the quotation is unintelligible), the garden, to satisfy its lust, “baits souls of the damned.” This reading makes the “garden” the villain and the young men the victims.

How does the garden identify the “souls of the damned?” Or do the “souls” become “damned” simply by virtue of their being baited? In other words, does the garden's baiting of the souls damn them? Alternatively, does the garden's “bait” work solely on souls that are already damned?

In any case, the quotation makes clear that the damned souls experience Eden's “wrath” only after they have been baited by the garden.

 

Of course, the filmmakers may have intended the quotation to begin with the prepositional phrase “lust for,” which situates the lust not in the garden itself, but in those who lust for the garden.

However, even such an attempt as this to infuse the production with depth is awkward. It characterizes beautiful young women as objects; they are flowers in a “beauteous garden,” planted, as it were, to “bait souls of the damned.”

Although, in this reading of the quotation, it is the damned souls' own lust that damns them, the flowers themselves are not entirely innocent; they are the “bait” that excites the men's lust and tempts them to sin, just as the Biblical Eve, in the garden of Eden, tempts Adam to sin. The “flowers,” one of which, metaphorically speaking, Eden appears to be, use their beauty to ensnare men, attracting their lust. In this sense, the “flowers” are no more passive than a Venus fly trap; the women are predators. Therefore, their “wrath” is hard to understand, let alone to justify.

In the Eden short, there is no serpent in the “beauteous garden” to entice the woman who entices J. D. and Jason, unless she is herself both serpent and seductress, a lamia like Lilith, Adam's first wife, according to Jewish folklore.

Perhaps, the filmmakers suggest, there is no need for a serpent as such. Instead, the sexist attitude of the young men makes them vulnerable to the charms of beautiful young women. To some degree, the young men's sexism is informed by the values and the norms of the larger society that nurtured them. The young men's notions of what is proper conduct with regard to women and sex is influenced by the media and by the conventions, customs, traditions, and practices of the patriarchal society in which they live.

Young men are taught, directly and indirectly, that it is acceptable to view women as objects, as “flowers” ripe for the plucking, as commodities that can be bought for the mere offer of a ride, the very offer that J. D. makes to Eden. These attitudes and values and the mores that inculcate them may be the snake in the garden which, in defining roles for young men, also define the complementary roles of young women.

However, Eden is not a typical young woman. She is the predator, rather than the young men's prey. She has turned the tables on her would-be conquerors, making them her victims. The beauty that would normally endanger her becomes a lure by which she snares her male victims. She, a potential victim, becomes the young men's victimizer. If she, rather than the young men, is the predator, it is hard to see how her “wrath” is justified.

Either possibility for reading the quotation, “lust of” or “lust for,” remains problematic. Indeed, if anyone seems worthy of blame, it is the party who entices, not the party who is enticed or, at the very least, both parties are equally to be blamed. Part of the problem derives from the ambiguity of the quotation that is supposed to indicate the theme of the movie, which, of course, is anything but a small error in a work of art.

If anything, the theme of the film seems to be simply that mere attraction to the beauty of the opposite sex can kill a youth. Neither J. D., who offers Eden a ride (possibly for ulterior reasons), nor Elliott, who never encounters Eden during his search for J. D., nor Jason, who simply approaches Eden, does anything to threaten her or in any way acts aggressively toward her. Nevertheless, she kills both J. D. and Jason, and the audience never learns Elliott's fate.

By themselves, the young men are in no danger. They are friends, not foes. They clown with one another, simulating fisticuffs, but they never hurt one another or came close to doing so. Their fighting is a mere pretense, consisting of friendly mock attacks and simulated counterattacks. Separated from one another, they are endangered by the sole member of the opposite sex they encounter on the dark streets.

Eden, the sole female character, is deadly. To be seduced by the charms of the opposite sex is dangerous; in fact, it can be fatal. It is better that men resist feminine beauty in favor of the company of their same-sex friends. Romance involving the opposite sex is dangerous; same-sex friendship is not. Beautiful young women break the bonds between men, disrupting homosocial relationships. Brothers are trustworthy; women are not. These seem to be the ultimate, prepubescent themes, or lessons, of Eden.

The Etymology of Horror

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

The Online Etymology Dictionary is not only interesting in itself, but it is also a reminder of the beliefs, attitudes, and, yes, fears (among other influences) that inspire words associated with language and, in the case of the topic for this post, horror.

 

“Troll,” for example, originally alluded to a “supernatural being in Scandinavian mythology and folklore and derived from the Old Norse troll, referring to a “giant being not of the human race, evil spirit, monster.” Its first recorded use, the Online Etymology Dictionary states, was in a court document concerning a case associated with witchcraft and sorcery. Allegedly, “a certain [witch named] Catherine” witnessed trolls rise from a churchyard in Hildiswick.” First conceived as giants, they were later believed to be “dwarfs and imps supposed to live in caves or under the ground.” Moreover, these formerly fierce beings became “obliging and neighbourly; freely lending and borrowing, and elsewise keeping up a friendly intercourse with mankind,” their thieving ways notwithstanding.

The dictionary's entry concerning the werewolf indicates that belief in these creatures, as people “'with the power to turn into a wolf' . . . . was widespread in the Middle Ages.” Apparently, it was also widely believed in Persia, where present-day Iran's ancestors named the October Varkazana, or the month of the “Wolf-Men.” 

Teratology, once the study of monsters, is now the study of physical abnormalities, such as those resulting from birth defects and “reproductive and developmentally-mediated disorders.” Its previous subject matter provides some interesting and, indeed, surprising insights into the origin of the concept of the monster as a horrific figure. Originally, a monster was an omen, sent by God to warn humanity (or a nation) of his displeasure; if the people didn't repent of their wickedness, God would follow his warning with punishment. Thus, for example, a pair of conjoined twins or a hermaphrodite would be taken as an admonitory message to be ignored at a people's own peril. As the Online Etymology Dictionary entry for this term reads, in part, “monster” derives from “Latin monstrum,” referring to a 'divine omen (especially one indicating misfortune), portent, sign; abnormal shape; monster, monstrosity,' [and means a] figuratively 'repulsive character, object of dread, awful deed, [or] abomination.'” Writers and readers of contemporary horror fiction might do well to keep this history of the word's meaning in mind the next time they take up a copy of Frankenstein or The Island of Dr. Moreau. Couldn't the scientists' monsters have been warnings sent by God, through the labors of Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau?

The lamia first seems to have been envisioned as a mermaid-vampire hybrid, but was later envisioned as a half-woman, half-serpent vampiric creature. Interestingly, the transformation of the lamia from mermaid to serpent-woman might have been suggested by the word lamia's association with “swallowing,” just as her erotic charm might have been suggested by the word's original link to lechery and her sorcery to the term's original connection to sorcery: “female demon, late 14c., from Latin lamia [meaning] 'witch, sorceress, vampire,' from Greek lamia [meaning] 'female vampire, man-eating monster,' literally 'swallower, lecher,' from laimos 'throat, gullet.'” The snake-like form of the lamia might have been based upon the idea that she was something of a personified gullet, since a snake has such a form.

Alluring, the lamia enthralled men with her charms (and, perhaps, with a bit of witchery, but, when her beauty and magic were no longer strong enough an attraction, she would kill and devour him, as the following passage suggests:

Also kynde erreþ in som beestes wondirliche j-schape, as it fareþ in a beest þat hatte lamia, þat haþ an heed as a mayde & body as a grym fissche[;] whan þat best lamya may fynde ony man, first a flatereþ wiþ hym with a wommannes face and makeþ hym ligge by here while he may dure, & whanne he may noferþere suffice to here lecherye þanne he rendeþ hym and sleþ and eteþ hym. [Bartholomew Glanville, c. 1360, "De proprietatibus rerum," translated by John of Trevisa]

Translation: An error among some kinds of animals sometimes results in a wondrous shape, such as that of the lamia, which has a woman's head and the body of a horrible fish. When a lamia finds a man, it flatters him with its beauty and makes him linger beside her until her charms no longer enthrall him, whereupon she slays and eats him. [Bartholomew Glanville, c. 1360, the Property of Things, translated by John of Trevisa]

Many other words associated with horror fiction also have interesting origins and histories, some of which could suggest new takes on old topics or altogether new approaches to such fiction.

What's So Monstrous About Monsters?

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

What makes a creature monstrous?

That's a question with which artists and writers) have contended for centuries. As a result, there are quite a few visions, visual and literary, of the monstrous. In this post, we'll consider a few examples of the former, as we examine a few ancient, medieval, and modern examples of monsters, as artists have envisioned them.

Since ancient times, the unknown has been one source of the idea of the monstrous. Many of these monsters, the likenesses of which are passed down to us in pictures, sculptures, and poetry, from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and elsewhere, are hybrids, mixing characteristics of both human beings and the so-called lower animals. Included among these creatures are such monsters as centaurs, hermaphrodites, lamia, minotaurs, and sirens, to mention but a few.

Other monsters are of gigantic scale, are missing an organ, an appendage, or another feature: the cyclops is a prime example, both of a gargantuan figure and of one who is missing an organ, having, as he or she does, only one eye. Another well-known specimen is the monopod, which was also known as the sciapod, skiapod, or skiapode, who appear in Aristophanes's The Birds (414 BC), in Pliny the Elder's Natural History (79), and St. Augustine's City of God (426).

In a few monsters, traits or organs were multiplied. Cerberus had three heads; hydra, many.

Often, ancient monsters inhabited remote places. The fact that they lived far away made an encounter with one of them unlikely, because long-distance travel was rare for ordinary people, except, in some cases, soldiers. For the same reason, oceans were often represented the homes of mysterious creatures, many of whom were of gigantic size and strange appearance. Examples include the the biblical Behemoth, the Norse Midgard Serpent, and Scylla and Charybdis.

Our brief survey of ancient monsters suggests many often exhibit these one or more of these characteristics:

• Mix human and animal characteristics
• Are gigantic in size
• Are missing one or more organs or traits
• Have one or more extra organs or traits
• Reside in distant locations

In Judaism and, later, in Christianity, monsters were no longer simply natural phenomena; they were created by God, for divine purposes. For example, hermaphrodites were tokens of his wrath; their births were warnings of God's fury concerning the conduct of particular communities and of the divine punishment that would occur if such behavior continued. Likewise, the gods of earlier religions were subsumed by Christianity, pagan deities becoming demons in Christian theology.

Throughout the Middle Ages, many monsters were drawn from the same sources: ancient and Christian accounts of these fascinating, terrible creatures, although, now, all familiar monsters were interpreted from the Christian perspective, with pagan monsters assuming demonic significance.

New additions to the ranks of the monstrous came from travels abroad or from pagan European tribes, before their conversions to the Christian faith. Of course, Christianity also supplied several monsters of its own, most significantly, Satan and the Antichrist.

Once Christianity became the religion of most, if not all, of the Western world, it united peoples from various tribes and cultures, becoming the unum round which e pluribus found its center. As polytheism gave way to monotheism and pagan faiths were replaced by one catholic, or universal faith (at least as the Western world is concerned), ideas about the nature of the monstrous changed, even as they merged under the authority and direction of Christian belief, authority, doctrine, and practice. Satan, demons, witches and sorcerers, heretics, and others who became victims of the Inquisition were the new monsters, common to all.

In modern times, the monstrous, as a concept, has taken on psychological significance, as the demons of hell become inner, or personal, demons, which is to say, personifications of individual human beings' unbridled impulses and animal instincts: aggression, lust, and the like. Especially in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the monstrous becomes primarily psychological, rather than cultural or theological per se. Alongside ancient and medieval monsters, we now have the narrator-protagonist of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” the vengeance-minded jester of “Hop-Frog,” and the obsessive-compulsive protagonist of “Berenice.”

Monsters are of only two origins: natural or supernatural. (“Paranormal” is merely a term designating natural phenomena which are, as yet, scientifically inexplicable, and psychological monsters, like extraterrestrial monstrosities, are of natural origin.)

But what makes monsters monstrous?

There are a number of theories. Some say monsters are monstrous because they represent actual, existential threats. The werewolf, for example, symbolizes the beast within the human; the madman a person whose behavior is unrestrained by reason. Such monsters are the bane of the rationalist's existence (and aren't we all, at least occasionally, rationalists?) They suggest the Enlightenment, though it undoubtedly happened, might have occurred in vain.

Others contend that monsters are monstrous because they suggest the threat of the unknown and, perhaps, the unfathomable. According to this view, monsters are only monstrous as long as they origin or nature remains unknown. Once the nature of the creature in Ambrose Bierce's “The Damned Thing” is understood (it is of a color outside the range of human perception and, therefore, invisible), it is no longer monstrous (although it remains both terrible and dangerous). Such monsters are epistemological threats or, at least, insecurities. If knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence (and, often, impotence is helplessness).

Monsters who occupy a rung higher in The Great Chain of Being than our own rung on the celestial ladder are theological threats. God defeated Satan, casting him and his followers out of heaven, but, even if we are created in God's image, we don't have his omnipotence; our fight with the devil or with demons, as both The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose show us, is not an even match, nor is it one that we, by ourselves, without divine aid, are able to win.

Christianity, it seems, is in abeyance; its influence over the multitudes of the western world appears to have diminished. As a result, paganism has resurfaced, and with it, the old monsters are, once again, venturing out of the darkness to which they were banished by reason and faith, as the current popularity of vampires, witches, demons, and other such ancient monsters attests. Side by side with them, though, the monsters of Christian faith continue to exist. The psychological monster, the madman, in his (or her) various guises, including those of the serial killer (Ben Willis, of I Know What You Did Last Summer), the sadistic sociopath (Jigsaw, of the Saw franchise), the psychotic murderer (Norman Bates, of Psycho), the mad scientist (Dr. Moreau, of The Island of Dr. Moreau), and the overzealous fan (Annie Wilkes, of Misery) has, more recently, joined them.

What monsters might the future spawn? What fears will they embody? What means shall overcome them? These, alas, are questions only time will answer, if they turn out to be answerable at all.

The Horror of Hybrid Creatures

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) remake starring Donald Sutherland takes an eerie turn when a dog with a man's face makes its—his?—appearance on the screen. Offhand, I don't remember what accounts for this strange human-bestial hybrid, but, according to a synopsis of the film, “Matthew and Elizabeth are exposed as human when” Elizabeth screams “upon seeing a mutant dog with a human face, the result of . . . . a mutagenic effect” which caused the assimilation of “both Harry and the dog into a composite organism.”

Such special effects were relatively new at the time, and the human-canine “composite organism” looked especially bizarre on film. Of course, such hybrids have a long history. Ancient mythology, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, and otherwise, frequently includes such creatures as the sirens (bird women and, later, fish women), lamias (snake men and women), harpies (women with eagles' wings), gorgons (women with snakes for hair), satyrs (goat men), centaurs (horse men), sphinxes (lions with human heads), and many others.

Some hybrids consist of human bodies with animal heads (the jackal-headed Anubis, the cat-headed Bastet, the elephant-headed Ganesha, the frog-headed Hequet, the falcon-headed Horus and Monthu, the ram-headed Khnum, the cobra-headed Meretseger, the crocodile-headed Sobek, the ibis-headed Thoth, and the boar-headed Varaha, to name but a few).

Other hybrids are anthropomorphic creatures with added animal parts, including the wings of birds (angels), insects (fairies), or bats (the dragon Hatuibwari); birds' legs (Lilitu) dogs' legs (Adlet), or other animals' legs; and cows' horns (Hathor) or stags' antlers Pashupati). To their anthropomorphic forms, some hybrids add even more animal parts, as many as three, four, five, or even more, from diverse species. For example, the Japanese Baku has an elephant's head, a rhinoceros's eyes, a tiger's legs, a bear's body, and an ox's tail.

One reason such creatures are horrific is that they represent exceptions to the taxonomy, or classification system, scientists use to classify organisms. For scientists (and the vast majority of laypersons), there is a clear-cut demarcation, or boundary line, between human beings (the only extant members of the subtribe Hominina) and non-human animals. When such boundaries are crossed, as they are, or would be, with human-animal hybrids, not only confusion results, but so does the idea that humans are somehow superior to “lesser” (non-human) animals. To insist on a difference between human beings and non-human animals is to maintain the superiority of the former over the latter. If humans are nothing more than an animal, every non-human animal is equal to humans in status and importance. There can be no hierarchy, such as that which was established by medieval Christianity's doctrine of the divinely established “great chain of being,” the basis, like God's decree, in Genesis 1:26, that “man” should “have dominion” over the earth and its fauna:

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Rather than being the image of God, and “the crown of creation,” humans would be just another member of the animal kingdom.

The taboo against bestiality is probably intended to safeguard the qualitative difference between humans and nonhuman animals. The fact that, although not universal, this taboo is widely in effect across the globe, with offenders subject to death or incarceration in some cases, suggests how insistent the separation between the categories of human and nonhuman continue to be. In horror fiction, it is the violation of this separation, the boundary between human and nonhuman animals that the violation represents, that is horrific, which is why the dog-faced hybrid in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers is eerie, even today, despite the less-than-spectacular (by today's standards) special effects that produced it.

Other movies (and novels) that mix both science fiction and horror, as they do man (or woman) and nonhuman animals, include H. G. Wells's novel 1896 The Island of Dr. Moreau, the 1932 movie Island of Lost Souls, the 1986 movie The Fly, the 2009 film Splice, and the 2001 movie Dagon.

Monstrous Variations

Copyright 2011 by Gary L. Pullman

There’s a limit, perhaps, to the number of horror villains that the genre’s writers can imagine. Fortunately, there are also variations on most, if not all, of them. Mr. Hyde, of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, seems to be a variation on the werewolf. He’s hirsute and ferocious and more than a bit bestial, but he’s not a werewolf per se.

 

The disembodied, winged phalli of ancient Greece and the Middle East, as I suggested earlier, appear to have put in a more modern appearance, albeit disguised and minus the wings, as it were, as the phallic parasites in the movie Shivers. Instead of flying, they slither, and they seem to have been skinned alive; nevertheless, their viscous meatiness suggest that they are members virile, as do their ability to spread sexually transmitted diseases and to render both sexes horny.

John Kenneth Muir believes that the computer that impregnates Susan Harris in Demon Seed is a stand-in, as it were, for Victor von Frankenstein; so, one might argue, is H. G. Wells’ Dr. Moreau, who is busy vivisecting animals in the hope4 of creating a race of hybrid “beast-men,” and what is the entity in The Entity if not a ghost-turned-incubus?

Although I myself don’t necessarily subscribe to the notion, some believe that aliens, or extraterrestrial beings, are really demons in disguise. In fact, this seems to be Dean Koontz’s stand on this issue, at least as far as his novel The Taking is concerned. Stephen King’s novel It gives a new shape--and identity--to the ancient god Proteus, with the monster of his novel able to change shape at will or to assume the identity of anyone It’s met. Modern devotees of Wicca have supplanted traditional witches. Ghosts are, often enough, embodiments, so to speak, of guilt associated with past deeds--or misdeeds.

I’m not talking pastiche here, not merely open imitation, for satirical purposes or otherwise, but a creative retooling of earlier horror monster along the lines of Renee Magritte’s retooling of the mermaid icon in his painting Collective Invention. I see examples in a lot of places, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Medusa-like Ovu Mobani demon in Marti Noxon’s “Dead Man’s Party” episode. A flash from its eyes paralyzes humans, just as the Medusa’s gaze turned her victims to stone.

Likewise, the half human, half-serpent demon Machida in David Greenwalt’s “Reptile Boy” is and is not a male version of the ancient Greek snake-woman known as the lamia. For one thing, he’s a he, not a she, and he doesn’t eat babies (as far as we know), apparently preferring nubile teens like Cordelia Chase, Buffy Summers, and the high school girl who is chained in the basement of the fraternity house in which his devotees, male college students who belong to the fraternity that worships him, reside. Buffy’s Machida demon is at least as original a departure from the ancient Greek lamia as Magritte’s fish-woman is on the ancient Greek siren, or mermaid, and it is such innovation that keeps horror fiction’s stable of fiends and monsters fresh. Variety is the spice of monsters, as it is of life.

Bases for Fear, Part II

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

To paraphrase Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in this and the next post, we ask of life, “How do I fear thee? Let me count the ways.”

Jails and prisons. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. They’re full of psychopaths in with whom one is locked! There may also be brutal, sadistic guards and an apathetic warden. There are beatings, rapes, and murders, and one can never trust anyone. Parole board meetings are likely to end in a denial of parole and a continuation, for at least four more years, of one’s sentence. For those who are scheduled to be executed, the electric chair, the gas chamber, the lethal drugs, or the firing squad looms, with seemingly interminable appeals stretching between the present (life, after a fashion) and the future (death by execution). Neither family members nor true friends are present. The closest thing to hell on earth, jails and prisons both isolate and imprison, trapping men and women in hostile, potentially lethal environments from which, as a rule, there is no escape, for which reasons they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.

Lamia. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. A lamia, or snake-woman, is a fusion of two creatures that are never otherwise a synthesis--a reptile and a human being of the feminine persuasion. Such hybrids are, in themselves, horrible. However, they are horrible for more than the reason that they represent a being that defies natural law and the way things are supposed to be. In such hybridizations, the animal component benefits from its fusion with the human, gaining much greater intelligence (unless the woman with whom the snake is fused is Brittany Spears or Paris Hilton, perhaps), but the human component of this ungodly union is not as fortunate. His or (in the case of lamias, gorgons, mermaid, naiads, and similar creatures) her nature is compromised and reduced because it takes on bestial features and qualities. The hybrid is less, not more, human. She slithers, not walks, and hisses, not talks, and her desires and needs and goals are more those of the serpent than the woman. This crossing of species is a crossing, too, of lines of propriety, a defiance both of nature and its God, who has cast the canons of existence into categories which are not to be regarded as mere conveniences but as expressions of divine will and natural law. As a defiance of nature’s status quo and the will of God, the lamia is, in horror fiction, if not in life, a basis for fear.

Mazes. Why do they frighten? The answer is simple. Mazes are difficult to navigate, because all but one of their many meandering corridors come to abrupt halts, or dead ends, against walls of brick, stone, or some other all-but-impenetrable substance, leaving the confused and distraught victim, once again, frustrated in his or her eager attempt at escape. The addition of a threat--a wild animal, a madman, or a monster--to the labyrinth, of course, ups the stakes considerably, making the maze, as a potential deathtrap, all the more horrifying. As symbols of the confusion and dangers of irrationality, mazes are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.

Night. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. Night is darkness, and darkness is blindness. It robs one of his or her most-used sight, vision. Night transforms a safe and secure--or, at least, a seemingly safe and secure--environment into one in which nothing is certain and no one is safe. And night lasts a long time--hours, or, if one is at the Arctic Circle, even days--which is plenty of time during which the monstrous forces of darkness can execute their plans for the death and destruction of their diurnal foes, which is to say, you (but never me). At night, what one does not see is what one gets! The long-term blinding effect of night is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.

The ocean. Why does it frighten? The answer is simple. The ocean is vast. It is also deep. It is filled with strange, often deadly, life forms alien to landlubbers and odd even to seafaring folk: giant squid, octopi, man-eating sharks. If the “finny denizens of the deep” don’t get the shipwrecked fool, the elements or hunger or thirst will. Meanwhile, one’s skin will burn and one’s mind will play delusional tricks that could result in the death of oneself or another who shares the lifeboat or a bit of flotsam floating upon the face of the deep. Land is hundreds, perhaps thousands, of miles away, and the only hope of rescue is the chance passing of a ship, should its crew see one among waves of twenty feet and more. To be lost at sea is to be lost, indeed. The ocean, therefore, is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.

Pain. Why does it frightening? The answer is simple. It hurts! It also possesses. Rather like the demons of old were thought to be capable of possessing a person’s soul, pain can possess a person’s body and mind, filling a nerve--or a million nerves--with impulses that the brain will interpret as excruciating agony. Pain is a seizure. Although painkillers can kill pain, for a time, at least, and, sometimes banish it for good, new pains can seize one’s frame at any moment. Pain grabs hold, and, without--and often in spite of--painkillers, it does not release one until it is ready to subside. Pain can last seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, or a lifetime. It’s a symptom, too--but a symptom of what? That’s the truly terrifying question, for although pain can portend nothing more serious than a paper cut, it may also foretell a long, drawn-out, and agonizing demise. Because pain is both painful in itself and because it may also be a sign of even worse things to come, it is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.

In the next post, additional bases for fear will be identified and considered, but, ‘ere we part, let’s summarize our findings with regard to the nine bases of fear that were listed in this post:

• Jails and prisons isolate and imprison, trapping men and women in hostile, potentially lethal environments from which, as a rule, there is no escape, for which reasons they are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• As a defiance of nature’s status quo and the will of God, the lamia is, in horror fiction, if not in life, a basis for fear.
• As symbols of the confusion and dangers of irrationality, mazes are, in horror fiction, as in life, bases for fear.
• The long-term blinding effect of night is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.
• To be lost at sea is to be lost, indeed; the ocean, therefore, is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.
• Because pain is both painful in itself and may be a sign of even worse things to come, it is, in horror fiction, as in life, a basis for fear.

Source of photographs: U.S. Government Photos and Graphics

Creepy Crawlies Quiz

Note: Keep track of your answers so you can check your accuracy!

1. According to math, which monster is impossible?

A. Ghost
B. Vampire
C. Werewolf
D. Zombie

2. Which monster’s true purpose is to carry water away from buildings?

A. Demon
B. Gargoyle
C. Lamia
D. Witch

3. Which monster is created from the use of a toxic drug?

A. Vampire
B. Werewolf
C. Witch
D. Zombie

4. Which of these items were used to frighten away evil spirits?

A. Crystal balls
B. Jack-o-lanterns
C. Halloween masks
D. Ropes

5. Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Christabel is about a(n)

A. Demon
B. Gargoyle
C. Lamia
D. Witch

6. Whose “keen fashion sense” helped her to fight monsters?

A. Buffy Summers
B. Daphne Blake
C. Nancy Drew
D. Prudence, Piper, and Phoebe Halliwell

7. According to ancient Hebrew legends, Adam’s first wife, Lilith, was a(n)

A. Ghost
B. Vampire
C. Witch
D. Zombie

8. Horus is an example of a(n)

A. Lycanthrope
B. Misanthrope
C. Therianthrope
D. Xenothrope

9. Which of these figures is considered an omen of death?

A. Banshee
B. Gorgon
C. Lamia
D. Siren

10. The enemies of the Norse gods were

A. Genies
B. Ghouls
C. Giants
D. Goblins

Click here to check your answers.